


the sciences sing a lullaby

by novembersmith



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Gen, M/M, baby scientists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:58:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2846888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/pseuds/novembersmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This, Rin, may be the start of a beautiful friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sciences sing a lullaby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SpaceRat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceRat/gifts).



> A science/space/science AU! Or, how it began. WATER: THE FINAL FRONTIER.

“You’re leaking,” a voice said flatly. Rin, who had been swiping at his face for the better part of an hour, measuring reef movement and taking salinity samples, because he was a _scientist_ , and maybe sniffling to himself, secure in his solitude, was in no way ready to hear a mysterious voice out of nowhere.

Professor Llumbl had said this was an uninhabited planet, and that it was safe, and had mysterious tides, and therefore Rin had deduced, with a good level of statistics and accuracy, probably, that he would not break his mother’s heart by dying here if he ran away from the class while he was exploring. 

Almost definitely.

Probably he hadn’t heard anything, anyway. 

He was just lonely.

He stared up at the pink sky and let the waves lap at him for a moment. He gulped miserably. He was homesick, and lonely, and now he was going crazy. It just figured.

His mother had enrolled him in the Star Fleet Science Summer Camp, against his wishes, like somehow that would make up for his father dying, and for her taking him and Gou away from home on Earth and locking them up on a spaceship. 

Apparently Cadet Hmi had snitched on how he kept skipping his classes to swim, hours upon hours, in the pool on the recreation deck. Apparently that wasn’t a healthy way to process his grief, and somehow she’d started making him help her with her xenobiology courses, and somehow Rin hadn’t minded some of them, and then somehow he’d been nominated for a scholarship, the youngest recipient ever, and his mom had been so proud, and Gou who had command written all over her, according to everyone, got to stay home.

And now Rin was here, on an alien beach, the USS Miyano hovering in the sky above them, and he’d never felt more lonely.

He wondered if this was how his father felt, when he went down with the whales on Earth. A hero, his mother had said. Dying to protect people who needed him. _Rin_ needed him.

His breath shuddered in his nose, and the pink sky blurred, and the weirdly sweet seawater sprayed across his face in cold droplets, and Rin didn’t _care_.

He wanted to go home, and home didn’t exist anymore. There was nowhere to go. He had no home.

Something touched his arm, and this planet was supposed to only have reef life – all microbial and sludgy and strangely mobile, marching back and forth with the tides. 

“Salt content, decreasing,” the voice said. “You are leaking.”

There was a boy in the waves, peeping up between the pillars of red and purple microbial structures. They were humming faintly – Rin had tried to tell his professor the reefs sang, would hum with you if you hummed back, but no one listened to him, here – the sad crazy boy from the wreck of Earthship 1.

The boy was silent, now. He had dark hair, and big eyes, and an expression as flat as his voice. He was up to his shoulders in the dark grey water, and behind him, there was a frantic lashing. Like a tail.

Rin was still a little worried he was going crazy.

He rubbed at his eyes, smearing the tears everywhere. “Are you real?” he asked suspiciously, voice clogged.

“Yes,” the boy said, sounding extremely dubious. “Why are you leaking? You should stop. There’s a shortage.”

“It’s tears, don’t you know about tears? Are you making fun of me?”

“I don’t understand,” the boy said, brow, very slightly, furrowing. Rin remembered, embarrassingly late, the universal translator that had been implanted before they left for the camp. A great honor, for such a little lad, the chief medical officer said, and Rin had managed to be extremely brave, but once he had it, it was pretty boring. It only meant that he could hear everyone, was all, and it didn’t make anyone actually any more easy to understand at all.

If the boy was real, and he was an alien, and he’d never met a Terran, then maybe he was confused. That was okay. Rin understood being confused. He was the only Terran in his class, and no one wanted to talk to the baby, and no one ever explained anything to him.

“Humans cry tears,” he explained, feeling, for a moment, important. His dad had helped prove the sentience of cetaceans, and that was so important, and now Rin was explaining Terrans to a new alien. That was good, wasn’t it?

“Cry,” the boy said, and reached out a hand. Rin hesitated – there was only supposed to be tiny stuff, on this planet, but – he slid over, across the humming reef sands. 

“Are you hurt,” the boy said, and thumbed the wetness of Rin’s cheek. Rin’s eyes went huge as the boy pushed the wet thumb back over Rin’s lips. “Crying. Like blood?”

The translator obviously wasn’t great with hallucinations, or non-Federation aliens. Or whatever this was. 

“There’s not a lot of salt here,” Rin remembered, from his the studies of the tides – it was the highest part of the six moon system right now, and maybe that meant – things were diluted?

He caught the boy’s hand. “I’m okay. I have plenty of salt.” He felt, more than saw, the boy relax. He looked – not human. But humanoid, from what Rin could see. His eyes were different than a Terran’s - he had a pupil like a smile, curled up, with two dimples at each end. Like a dolphin on earth, in high light, at the sea’s surface. Rin’s father had taught him, showed him before he died.

Maybe this boy usually lived at low light conditions. Like a dolphin. How else could Star Fleet have missed him, here? Maybe no one had explored the deep oceans on IWT-0B.

“My name’s Matsuoka Rin,” he said, suddenly remembering his manners, nervous to be the first contact, maybe. He had dreamed – but he wasn’t really. Really ready for that, he hadn’t – he’d only passed the freshman level courses in xenoanthropology by accident, unofficially. “I, uh.” He couldn’t remember the protocols. He was a representative of Starfleet, and he couldn’t remember the protocols! 

“Nanase Haruka,” the boy said, and apparently deciding that he didn’t need to worry about Rin losing too much salt, licked the fingers that he had pushed along Rin’s cheek, against his lips. His teeth were – not sharp, exactly. But not the teeth of an herbivore, either. And he wasn’t – Rin knew about cultural differences, he wasn’t a baby, but this boy just seemed like a boy. A kid, like him.

“Do you need salt?” Rin worried, and the boy leaned in, his torso longer, and leaner, than Rin had expected. His hands were soft. Rin held was still as Haru, very calmly, licked Rin’s cheek. 

“Yes,” he said. Nothing more. Rin felt anxious, and worried. This was too much – he wasn’t twelve yet. He would mess this up. He didn’t know what to do.

“Why didn’t you ask us, when we came before? You know about the others, we’ve been coming here for ages. Are there more of you?”

“I heard you singing. No one else came singing. Do you swim?”

It was hard, for a moment, to remember anything but swimming with his father and the Cetaceans, the wide sea around them. The USS Miyano’s pool was shallow, and as artificial as a tomato from a replicator. Worse. More lifeless. And around them was a wide, calm, endless sea, lapping at the humming shore.

“Yes,” Rin said, thoughtlessly, helplessly.

The boy – Haru – smiled for the first time, and took Rin’s hand in his own. Rin felt hot, against the cool grip, and let the boy pull him into the water. 

Six hours later, Rin resurfaced, fitted with an oxygen converter, along with a deeply suspicious Haru regarding all the lights and noise of the search for the missing student, and an apologetic Makoto, apparently the valet of Haru, prince of IWT-0B, and the Seneschal Sasabe, who had emerged upon the promise of vast possible vistas of salt, and other spices beside that.

And that was how Matusoka Rin became the youngest member of Startfleet to ever initiate First Contact with a species, help negotiate their entry into the Federation, as well as meet the science officer of his eventual first command.

But that last – well, that was yet to come.


End file.
